Tag: dead bird

At the time of writing there were 34,936 apps for the iPad. I have used about 30 of these. If you are looking for an informative, exhaustive review of the apps currently available for the iPad, this is going to be the biggest disappointment since Raoul Moat’s killing “spree”. If however you are looking for an uninformative, limited review of my own personal favourite apps…………you’re a fucking weirdo, get off my lawn.

Let’s begin!

VLC – If you don’t have this app, this is what will happen to you:

Whilst trying to transfer a very, very legal download of South Park series 13 onto your iPad, iTunes will basically tell you to go and fist yourself. You will try for days to bypass iTunes and its all encompassing power to destroy your life. You will fail. After admitting defeat you will spend three more days converting your files to a format deemed acceptable by iTunes by means of a ‘free’ software package. Finally, and with a huge sigh of relief, you will click ‘transfer’. You will receive the following message: “Thank you for choosing our software to convert your video files. In order to transfer the files onto your device you will need to upgrade to our full version which will cost £1,000,000. It’s okay though, we use Paypal so it will be convenient and hassle free!”. Hours later you will be spotted skipping naked down the high street wearing a sock puppet on one hand and flinging shit at passing old ladies with the other, occasionally stopping to eat your own hair whilst poking yourself in the eye with your toe.

For the love of God, get this app. No one likes sock puppets.

TV CATCHUP – This app basically turns the iPad into a TV by means of witchcraft. Very handy if you like a moan at your boyfriend for watching Babestation when Snog, Marry, Avoid is on. It shows most of the decent channels including Dave (most important) but the picture quality can be pretty poor at times and because it is shown live, you can’t rewind anything if you’ve missed the beginning. All in all though the good out-weighs the bad and anything that can magically turn something into a TV gets 5 stars from me. Now if they could only apply this TV magic to the back of my head, Billy would die a happy man.

DISCOVER – This is a Wikipedia app presented in the form of a magazine. It has a photo of the day, an article of the day and all the encyclopaedia articles you could ever want. It’s also in HD which makes me feel warm inside. There isn’t much use for it on a daily basis but I think it would be good to have on a train or the Megabus. Although, I wouldn’t recommend waving an iPad around on a Megabus, that would be like waving around a quarterpounder with cheese in a Malawian orphanage.

iPERIOD – This is an app that keeps track of your periods. I have found to my surprise that this app is more popular with men. One of my guy friends whipped it out the other day when trying to organise a golfing trip with his brother saying “Well, the wife will be shedding the tears of a disappointed uterus next weekend so it would be nice to get out of the house for a couple of days”.

GAMES – As you can probably guess there are no real epics for the iPad so don’t expect to devote more than a couple of hours of your life in order to complete a game. There are still a few that are worth a look though, my three favourites are:

SPARKLE HD: One of those blow-up-a-chain-of-coloured-balls type games favoured the world over by lonely housewives with bingo addictions. This one is actually very good, the music sounds like it’s from Beetlejuice and the HD graphics are immense.

HARBOUR MASTER HD: Pretty simple but highly addictive. You have to move boats about so they don’t crash into each other. I wish I had more to add but that is literally it.

VIRTUAL VILLAGERS 3: I am fully aware that this is a shitty sim game but there is something kind of 90’s about it that makes me happy. You land on a deserted island and have to make sure your villagers survive by building stuff, finding food, making babies, etc. Completely pointless, but there was a time when all computer games were pointless and, well, sometimes I just miss those days.

While I am on the subject of games, I’m not really a fan of Angry Birds. Am I the only person in the universe who feels this way?…………….Besides you, Tumbleweed.

PHOTO SLIDESHOW – Not technically an app, just something the iPad can do. You can use your iPad as a kind of picture frame that changes photo every few seconds via an unfolding origami-type display. It’s pretty cool to watch and a nice idea I suppose but I can’t help wonder when we are expected to use it. Can you imagine taking it into your office and setting it up next to your monitor, leaving it to show random photos of your family on their last skiing trip? Seriously, imagine how much of a dick you would look. I tried it out in the privacy of my own home and it didn’t really work out. These are the first four photos that came up: A photo of a naked doll that I found on the side of a mountain in Skye that looked like a dead baby, a picture of my dog trying to hump another dog’s face, a picture of Hitler with a speech bubble saying “I blame the parents” and a photo of a dead bird in a ziplock bag stuck to a wall by a magnet. If I worked in an office I would be eating my lunch alone.

So there you go, a few of the apps that have earned a place on my homescreen. I could honestly keep going, I have another ten apps that I use but for those of you who don’t have an iPad this blog entry is hardly a page-turner so I will spare you the torture of reading about amazing things that you will never have. I feel like the parent of a high-achieving child; so much to say but no one really gives a fuck. I think I’m going to start going to coffee mornings with other iPad owners. Call me.

I found this on the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Shat myself.

Any hole’s a goal. We’ve trained him well.

He’s saying “I blame the parents”. I was bored.

The bird I kept as a pet on my oil rig. He died in my hands after 24 hours. I tried to feed him digestives but he wasn’t very well 😦